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Updated: June 8, 2025
The religious orders with their candles and torches, the companies of the parishes with their crosses and flags, lighted up the dim side-chapels; and in the aisles the silken folds of the processional banners drooped, their gilded staves and tassels glinting under the arches.
All these ornaments are richly gilt, and present a peculiarly imposing appearance. The side-chapels contain numerous monuments, mostly of white marble, and one single one of black, in memory of celebrated Maltese knights. At the right-hand corner of the church is the so-called "rose-coloured" chapel.
The banners, in particular, abounded, as innumerable as the leaves of trees. Some thirty hung from the vaulted roof, whilst others were suspended, like pictures, between the little columns around the triforium. And others, again, displayed themselves on the walls, waved in the depths of the side-chapels, and encompassed the choir with a heaven of silk, satin, and velvet.
There were scarcely any aisles; they were reduced to the proportions of a mere passage running between the side-chapels and the clustering columns, and this circumstance seemed to increase the slim loftiness of the nave, the soaring of the stonework in perpendicular lines of infantile, graceful slenderness.
When he recognised Madame Quenu he grasped her hand, called her "dear lady," and conducted her to the vestry, where, taking off his surplice, he told her that he would be entirely at her service in a moment. They returned, the priest in his cassock, bareheaded, and Lisa strutting along in her shawl, and paced up and down in front of the side-chapels adjacent to the Rue du Jour.
The vaults serve as burial-places for the kings, and their monuments are erected in the side-chapels. On each side of the nave of the church are placed effigies of armed knights on horseback, whose armour belonged to the former kings of Sweden. The walls and angles of the church are profusely decorated with flags and standards, said to number five thousand.
But Gilbert passed boldly in among the high nobles of France and Guienne, and knelt with them in the dim nave, where little oil-lamps hung under the high vaults, and many candles burned upon the altars in the side-chapels, shedding a soft light on dark faces and mailed breasts and rich mantles.
The side-chapels are filled with tombs of knightly families, the husband and wife lying on their backs on the tombs, with their hands clasped, while their children, about the size of dolls, are kneeling around. Numberless are the Barons and Earls and Dukes, whose grim effigies stare from their tombs. In opposite chapels are the tombs of Mary and Elizabeth, and near the former that of Darnley.
But what was far less comforting and more irritating even than this array of side-chapels, with their wretched adornment with names that had been changed since their first dedication so that the tutelary protection earned by centuries of service had ceased to exist was the choir, battered, dirty, degraded as if on purpose. And mischance had helped.
The banners, in particular, abounded, as innumerable as the leaves of trees. Some thirty hung from the vaulted roof, whilst others were suspended, like pictures, between the little columns around the triforium. And others, again, displayed themselves on the walls, waved in the depths of the side-chapels, and encompassed the choir with a heaven of silk, satin, and velvet.
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